“Don’t Take the Social Out of Social Work”

Abstract

Through an historical biographical lens, this article examines the career of an early Canadian social worker, Bessie Touzel (1904–1997). Touzel was a socialist feminist and practiced a left-leaning form of social work during the formative years of the profession. This was in tension with the earlier dominant ideas based on an imperial Anglo-Christian worldview. Two world wars, the Great Depression, and the establishment of the welfare state in Canada are the backdrop to contested ideas on the identity of the newly establishing female-dominated profession. As a woman in senior administration in early public social services, Touzel was a feminist pioneer with a vision of equal rights within a framework of universal rights. A closer look at her career illuminates not only the obstacles and challenges she faced as she strove to defend her personal social work values but also highlights the debates, which the profession struggled to reconcile.

Bessie Touzel (1904–1997) was a socialist feminist and a left-leaning social worker whose 40 years of service coincided with the formative years of the profession of social work in Canada. These years were characterized by contestation and debate between different political positions, different visions of what the mandate for social work should be, and a struggle to gain recognition and acceptance as a legitimate profession. In Canada, the early voluntary charity-based services were dominated by Anglo-Christian conservative ideas (Jennissen & Lundy, 2011; Woodroofe, 1974). The tension between these ideas and secular left-leaning socialist ideas intensified as social work became more professionalized with university training and an organized association (Johnstone, 2015). Touzel became an important social work actor in the postwar social reconstruction in Canada that resulted in the creation of a welfare state in the 1940s. A closer look at her career illuminates not only the obstacles and challenges she faced as she strove to defend her personal social work values but also highlights the debates which the profession struggled to reconcile.

The top-down explanation of history describes the political and legislative changes, which characterized an historical era and chronicles the deeds and policies of leaders and persons in pivotal senior positions. While this is important information, it often omits the role of women that more commonly occurred at a grassroots level. Feminist historians have enriched this knowledge base of local events with their exploration of women’s history (Morton, 2014; Netting, O’Connor, & Fauri, 2009). This article builds on this feminist ground-up historical perspective and provides a detailed case example of one left-leaning female social worker. Although Touzel was in many ways an exceptional woman, there were many other social workers like her who were also part of this local groundswell to build a better world. A bottom-up view of state formation and change examines the role of activity, which occurred at the local level rather than nationally and so is easily omitted as an explanatory factor of national change. Many histories of the creation of the welfare state in Canada present a top-down view of the events, where visionary male figures are positioned as key actors and their work is portrayed as a response to the economic and political conditions of the time. The Great Depression, the two world wars, and mounting dissatisfaction with widespread unemployment and unacceptable labor conditions are cited as important causative events (Finkel, 1979; Graham, Swift, & Delaney, 2009; Guest, 1997). While these scholarly studies provide an important historical record of seminal events, this study focuses on the less-examined social history of women social workers in both the pre-welfare years and in the creation of a welfare state.

There is a range of other work on Touzel, but these sources are very fragmented (Christie, 2000; Finkel, 2007; Jennissen & Lundy, 2011; Struthers, 1989, 1994; Wills, 1995). These accounts range from histories of social welfare and social work in Canada to accounts of Cold War social work, the feminist peace movement, and left-leaning and communist organizing (Ball, 1994; Lewey, 2006; Martin, 2007; Purdy & Reid, 1998). After Touzel’s death, a tribute to her was hosted at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto on September 15, 1998. Copies of The Proceedings of the Bessie Touzel Tribute are held at Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. A family tribute from Touzel’s nephew John Patton (which provides useful personal information on Touzel) and a lecture from James Struthers (Canadian welfare historian who met and interviewed Touzel twice in 1989 for his book on the welfare history of Ontario) are contained in this publication.

This article adds to the literature by assembling known material on Touzel into a single study and expanding this with the results of examining the archives of key social work agencies and interviews with selected scholars who knew Touzel. This also contributes to the literature on the Canadian radical social work tradition, which is not well documented. There was a small vibrant community of women who subscribed to socialist feminism and left-leaning ideas who practiced social work in Canada in the 1930s and the 1940s. However, these women did not organize in a manner comparable to the Rank and file movement in the United States (Jennissen & Lundy, 2011). Consequently, there is not a robust social work historical literature on these women such as exists in the United States (Reisch & Andrews, 2002). ¹ I will begin by tracing key formative events in Touzel’s early life and education. This will be followed by an account of her social work career with a particular focus on her choice of a radical path as the route to her vision of a better world.

Personal Beginnings and Social Location

Touzel was born in rural Ontario in 1904, in a small conservative town made up of settler pioneers of British stock, many of whom like Touzel were of Irish descent. The divisive exclusiveness of the Protestants and Catholics in her hometown appalled Touzel and as an adult she became atheist in her religious position, discussing this openly on radio talk shows at a time when this was frowned upon (Ball, 1994). Her nephew John Patton recalled that while Touzel had an abhorrence of intolerance and the exclusionary practices of organized religion, she maintained an interest in religion and spirituality. Her apartment was home to cherished religious objects and she had an extensive collection of books on religion (Patton, 1998).

Having suffered from poliomeylitis since the age of 1, which resulted in many years of hospitalization in Toronto, Touzel became an avid reader. At an early age, she discovered the writing of the English rationalists in her local library and recalled that she was transformed by their ideas (Ball, 1994). These authors such as Julian Huxley and Mathew Arnold disputed religious interpretations of the world and adopted a humanist perspective governed by rational human ideas of ethics and morality rather than faith-based adherence to religious morality. Touzel was the eldest child of a family of eight children, but perhaps because she was often absent and in recovery from a succession of operations, she seemed to strike out in an autonomous life path when she was a young woman. She made a decision to pursue social work as a career, after considering a medical path to become a doctor (Ball, 1994).

She moved to Toronto in 1926, where she did not know anyone, a momentous move for a young woman from a small rural town. Women had recently gained the right to vote and were increasingly present in universities and the paid work force. During her hospital years in Toronto, Touzel witnessed women entering the new female-based professions, which included nursing and social work. At this time, in the early 1920s, there was a strong link between Christian service, social reform, and voluntary charity work. The developing profession of social work had been dominated by voluntary upper- and middle-class women who were dedicated to philanthropic social improvement (Wiebe, 1967; Woodroofe, 1974). However, it was also during this decade that a shift began to take place. There was a developing interest in a scientific approach to social knowledge using surveys and data analysis to guide decision making. A new focus on a rational reasoned approach to social problems rather than using Christian morality to “uplift” the poor began to gain strength (Irving, 1992). These developments coincided with Touzel’s independent reading of the English rationalists and her own critical perspective on religion. This new approach provoked contested public discourses on social and individual responsibility. The discussion on social reform became polarized between those who adhered to conservative, Christian imperial agendas of individual responsibility and those who were more socialistic and left leaning with community-based solutions.

The University of Toronto began offering a Social Service Diploma program in 1914 (the first in Canada) and it was in that program that Touzel enrolled in 1927. Retrospectively, Touzel remembered E. J. Urwick as a formative influence on her development as a social worker (Struthers, personal communication, June 26, 2013). Prior to becoming head of the Department of Social Service, Urwick was the head of the Department of Political Eeconomy and these dual roles were apparent in his approach to social work captured in this statement: “every student shall graduate with a deep sense of social responsibility, a consciousness of the profundity of what we too glibly call social problems, and most of all a firm faith in the infinite power of personal effort in the cause of social betterment” (Urwick, 1940, p. 8). While she was taught casework in the tradition laid out by Mary Richmond and completed a fieldwork placement in settlement work, Touzel was also taught political science and economics as part of her university training (Chambon, 2012). Touzel graduated with an appreciation of the political implications of social problems and an understanding of modern sociological research methods. This was tempered with training in the traditional casework approach to social work and Urwick’s injunction to remember the power of personal effort and the importance of service.

The Great Depression

In 1928, Touzel accepted her first professional position with the Neighbourhood Workers Association in Toronto as a caseworker screening for relief benefits while doing community work. After 2 years, she was promoted to management as a district secretary of the Scarborough Region. Touzel considered that she honed her professional skills in this job on the streets of the settlement areas of Toronto. Her nephew, John Patton (1998), reported that “the enabling and empowerment of these women who were often immigrant, typically uneducated and universally poor became a touchstone of her career” (p. 10). As a new graduate, Touzel joined the newly formed Canadian Association of Social Work (CASW), which was about to be confronted with challenges to its fundamental assumptions. Established in 1926, the CASW had a founding mission of service to the community through promoting professional standards, encouraging proper training, and gaining public recognition as the means to carry out service to the community (CASW, 1926, p. 284). The Depression resulted in a challenge to this mission from members such as Touzel who suggested that social work should become more politicized. Hot debate polarized the membership and the majority advised against political involvement. A more conservative gradual reform over time was viewed as the desirable path for the profession to follow (CASW, 1932). While radical social workers in Canada were less unified than in the United States, they were aware of what was happening in south of the border. Invited by the CASW, Mary Van Kleeck made a presentation at the Federation for Community Service in Toronto in 1933; and in 1935, she addressed social workers in Toronto again. Her speeches were Marxist and called for the profession to adopt social action as a platform (Lewey, 2006). Touzel may well have attended these presentations and most certainly knew colleagues who did.

While many social workers would support a more structural approach by the 1940s, in the early 1930s, most social workers used an individualized case-based approach. Touzel became part of a group of social workers who were seeking a more politicized approach to social work in Canada. In a short article in Social Welfare, the primary journal for the CASWs, Touzel questioned the exclusive use of a psychological individual-based casework approach and recognized that the conditions resulting from the Depression must be addressed.

The situation we face is not dissimilar to the one which an epidemic presents to the medical profession … if out of this experience, we social workers are to secure data of value in reducing unemployment-the greatest social ill and the curse of modern society-we must be prepared, without prejudice, to interpret the experiences of this time of economic depression (Touzel, 1930, p. 7).

In these recommendations, Touzel was ahead of her time. In 1931, Touzel participated in a 3-day conference on social welfare and the unemployment problem organized by Harry Cassidy (1900–1951) newly appointed to the Department of Social Service at the University of Toronto. Committed to social reconstruction and social democracy, Cassidy worked tirelessly on social welfare reform employing an empirical approach, surveying, analyzing, and disseminating his findings (Irving, 1995). In 1931, he was a leading creator of the League for Social Reconstruction, a left-leaning think tank made up largely of academic scholars. Eventually, they published an influential book, which described their findings and social recommendations called Social Planning for Canada (Scott et al., 1935/1975). Touzel may have known Cassidy prior to the conference of 1931. but this is the first concrete evidence of their association. At the 1931 conference, Touzel spoke on the “Social Effects of Unemployment on the Family” reporting her findings from a survey of unemployment relief administered by Toronto’s House of Industry (Touzel, 1931). Her association with Cassidy continued until his premature death in 1951. Over the years, they developed a mutual respect for one another and consulted on social reform initiatives and strategies. Cassidy valued Touzel’s wide-ranging knowledge of community affairs and they shared a common left-leaning vision of what was best for Canada.

When the Great Depression began in 1930, Ontario lacked a provincial public welfare structure for assessing and alleviating need. The two public relief agencies were the Division of Social Welfare and the House of Industry. Private charities such as the Neighbourhood Workers Association where Touzel worked provided relief casework and coordinated with the public services. At this time, there were only 400–500 trained social workers in all of Canada and most of them worked with private charities. Local governments were receiving no extra funding to accommodate administrative expenses (Struthers, 1989). In 1932, the government appointed an advisory committee of business men (Campbell Committee) to establish relief standards. Ceilings on relief contributions to the municipalities were imposed and a network of district relief inspectors began supervising new standards for food, shelter, and other necessities (Struthers, 1989). The Depression saw community activists, left-leaning social workers, politicians, intellectuals, and trade unionists beginning to debate ideas on how to establish and increase social protection in Canada (Rice & Prince, 2013).

Chief of Staff for the City of Ottawa Welfare Board

Touzel’s professional ideals, moral vision of justice, and her developing left-leaning social political position were already in place in 1933 when she accepted the newly created position as chief of staff for the City of Ottawa Welfare Board. In 1933, a Public Welfare Board was created and it was decided that an experienced social worker be appointed as supervisor of staff with a governing board of lay people and city councillors. The Ottawa Welfare Board provided relief in kind and the Public Welfare Department issued relief cash payments (Touzel, 1936). Ottawa was one of the first Canadian communities to employ professional social workers in the distribution of relief and so this was an honor and a responsibility for Touzel. In her charge were 40 female social workers who were engaged in relief casework across the city of Ottawa. Over a period of 3 years, Touzel guided her staff in a practice of careful but compassionate distribution of relief funds and accessing of community resources. Under her tutelage, her social workers gradually liberalized the income support relief program. Casual earnings were no longer deducted from the relief allowance (the policy was that earnings were reported to the relief worker and then deducted from the relief cheque). Clothing was provided through the Ottawa Neighborhood Services and grants covered rent and fuel. As Ottawa is the second coldest capital city in the world (after Moscow), the rent and fuel costs are much higher than in other parts of the province. Despite this, under Touzel’s leadership, Ottawa ranked third overall in total per capita relief expenditure among the six major cities in Ontario. Regular reports were provided to the Board of Control (Touzel, 1936). In recognition of her accomplishments in May 1935, Touzel was one of 7,500 recipients in Canada issued with the Jubilee medal in recognition of outstanding performance in service of the public (Medal, 1935).

In this leadership position, Touzel honed her developing philosophy to a more politicized approach to practice with an awareness of the structural implications of social problems, which confronted her social workers. Touzel published her new approach in The Social Worker in 1935 in an article entitled “The Challenge to the Worker in the Transfer from Private to Public Service.” Touzel identified what she called the new client, the new casework, and the new philosophy. With respect the new client, she said

She [the social worker] is meeting with clients who, most often, are not abnormal, personality or social problems, but people from a cross section of society, with all the talents of normal citizens facing economic dependence and an enormous sense of insecurity developed therefrom (p. 5).

Using quantitative data, Touzel demonstrated how these “new” clients were different and had substantial records of gainful employment. She described the need for a new kind of casework to supplement psychological individual casework with this client group as follows:

She [the social worker] knows that it is better that the client handle his own problems insofar as he is able, and that securities should be added to him insofar as the community and her agency can and will make this possible; but that the technique of digging and more intense study would probably do injury to this individual (p. 6).

In the spring of 1936, there was a federal cutback in relief payments to the province. To fill the gap, the city increased property taxes, which ignited a backlash against the city’s new welfare board (Struthers, 1989). Ottawa’s Mayor declared that women are good for social service work but he wanted to “divorce direct relief from social service … the men investigators did better work than women; they were not interested in social service but in seeing that those on relief gave the city the right information and reported their earnings” (Touzel, 1936, p. 2). The Board of Control declared that “Ottawa citizens on relief must be chisellers and the social workers employed by the Public Welfare Board must be visionaries and dupes. They dismissed Touzel’s team of forty women social workers and replaced them with eleven male special police officers” (Touzel, 1936, p. 2). In protest, Touzel resigned and wrote a public letter entitled “A Social Worker’s Protest” of approximately 650 words, which was published by the Ottawa daily newspaper The Citizen and in The Social Worker. In her letter, Touzel defended relief recipients against allegations of “chiselling” (fraudulent) claims. She challenged both the managerial practices that dismissed employees without investigation or enquiry and the political decisions on relief provision, which were motivated by the fiscal austerity of economic liberalism. She asserted “I do not believe that families on relief can continue with any reasonable assurance of health, or even the previous standard of living, at the present rate of assistance” and the rigidity of the new rules “is going to make for suffering and a demand on the citizens of Ottawa for additional household needs which is beyond reason” (Touzel, 1936, p. 4). Touzel did not explicitly address the attack on women but chose to present the issues in a wider universal frame of management practices and relief provision.

In her public stand, Touzel nonetheless defended two groups of women. It was women who were most often relief recipients as widows and abandoned wives and it was women who dominated the social work profession, which was under attack from the Board of Control. Her act of resistance became the discussion point for the subsequent edition of The Social Worker and sparked a nation-wide discussion among social workers on the role of social work. For Touzel, it was a significant milestone in her development as a social worker and as a social activist who acted on “the power of personal effort to effect social betterment” as she had been taught by E. J. Urwick. After her resignation, Touzel accepted a position as an assistant director at the Canadian Welfare Council, a national organization based in Ottawa, and remained there until 1940.

The Postwar Social Reconstruction Movement

In the early 1940s, a public opinion poll indicated a widespread desire for postwar social reconstruction that would ensure that there was no return to the privations of the depression years. There was public demand for universal social programs including national health insurance, universal pensions for Canadians over 60 years, and a planned peacetime economy. In 1940, Touzel accepted the position of executive secretary at the Welfare Council of Toronto (now the Social Planning Council [SC] of Toronto). This was an organization set up to research current social problems and make recommendations for solutions. With representatives from a number of social service agencies in the city, this Council was governed by a Board and executive, which was made up of member agencies as well as prominent Toronto business men (SC 40, Box 26, File 5). The left-leaning political party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, Trade Labour Unions, and farmers had gained political ground at this time, creating pressure from below for social reform (Finkel, 2007).

Left-leaning social workers such as Touzel became a significant part of that pressure from below for change. In her work at the Welfare Council, Touzel was a vocal advocate for the creation of a welfare state, which would provide cradle-to-grave universal benefits. The Toronto Reconstruction Council (TRC) was set up in 1943 as a municipal postwar reconstruction initiative involving 65 member organizations and a cross-section of almost a 1,000 Toronto citizens. Many of the key personalities came from the Department of Social Work at the University of Toronto and the Welfare Council. Harry Cassidy (now the director of the School of Social Work) was vice-chair, Charles Hendry, a leading expert on community organization (from the School of Social Work), and Albert Rose (a research director at the Welfare Council and faculty at the School of Social Work) were all members (Brushett, 1999). Touzel represented the Welfare Council on the TRC and continued her membership after she moved to the national Canadian Welfare Council in 1947 (SC 40, Box 80, File 15). Touzel was one of the few female figures on this Council and she used this platform to address issues, which were important to women, children, and marginalized community members. Touzel inserted her recommendations into the leading debates of the day and successfully promoted her feminist-socialist agenda for change while sustaining the high regard of her male peers.

During her 7 years at the Welfare Council, Touzel was in the forefront of an astonishing range of social protection initiatives in the areas of the cost of living, minimum wage, labor reform for women, housing, day care, and a Community Chest in Toronto. She led the production of the Directory of Welfare resources published in 1942 and she chaired the Committee on Public Welfare, which conducted research, designed educational programs, and presented policy briefs to the government on numerous pressing questions of the day. In 1942, Touzel accepted an invitation to serve on a committee appointed by the Federation of Mayors and Municipalities to report on the necessary public welfare services for the postwar period (SC 40, Box 89, File 1).

Cost of Living Study and the Creation of the Welfare State

Touzel led the response to a city request to reevaluate the adequacy of relief rates. This request was relayed to the Welfare Council in 1941. The existing relief rate was based on the inadequate Campbell Report that Touzel had used for her relief work in Ottawa. Capitalizing on the public concern over health and nutrition, Touzel enlisted Dr. Alice Willard, PhD, a nutritionist and a professor in the Department of Household Sciences at the University of Toronto and Miss Marjorie Bell, B.Sc., who was the director of the Visiting Homemakers Association. The results showed that healthy eating was impossible on the existing relief rates and further studies established what the required rates would be. In response to the data, the City Council increased the rates by 20%, but the Province remained unconvinced. Touzel added Dr. Tisdall, a nutritionist at the University of Toronto to the committee; and in 1941, a new scientific report, the Tisdall–Willard–Bell report, was prepared and presented (Struthers, 1994). Municipal authorities voted in favor of the report and sent a delegation to the provincial Premier who was then quoted in the Globe as saying “Certain members of the Council are putting a premium on idleness and if it is not stopped, I am prepared to recommend action be taken by the government” (SC 40, Box 89, File 1, Memo on history of relief standard discussions 1942–1943 by Bessie Touzel, p. 4). It was 3 years later that his impasse was resolved through a supplementary study with yet another nutritionist Dr. McHendry commissioned by the Province, and in 1944, the Province adopted new rates (Struthers, 1994).

In the interim between the municipal adoption of the recommendations of the Tisdall–Willard–Bell report and the Provincial accession to an increase in rates, Touzel kept the issue in the public domain with letters to the Toronto Daily Star and the Globe and Mail and memos to government officials and professionals. Furthermore, she oversaw the production of a booklet called The Cost of Living , which was based on the Tisdall–Willard–Bell report and detailed adequate food standards for a moderate family budget. This study was useful for social workers, socially minded lawyers, and trade union officials who picked it up and began using it for wage negotiation. The demand for the booklet was such that updated versions were reissued for several years and the red cover led to the booklet being nicknamed the “red book” (SC 40, Box 89, File 1). The cost-of-living study had become a benchmark, a key document of reference.

While she was employed at the Welfare Council, Touzel was granted leave to act as a collaborator with Leonard Marsh in connection with the development of the Marsh Report, Social Security for Canada. This became the report that formed the blueprint for the establishment of a welfare state in Canada (Guest, 1997). The cost of living report which Touzel had spearheaded was a critical publication during the writing of the Marsh Report, as it was based on a thorough multidisciplinary study of the actual conditions and costs confronting relief recipients. Touzel’s involvement with the TRC and the widespread popularity of the red book positioned Touzel as an essential participant. She spent 6 weeks engaged in this federal commission (SC 40, Box 89, File 1). The resulting Marsh Report (1943 [1975]) was premised on social insurance, family allowances, and national investment. The new proposal replaced the previous charity-based practice of public relief with a system that pooled risks and funds with mandatory contributions and/or general taxation (Rice & Prince, 2013). The Marsh Report represented a left-leaning shift toward public responsibility for social protection (Guest, 1997). Following her participation in preparing the report, Touzel actively mobilized to implement it. She crafted the following statement to be sent to the National Board of the CASW:

That the CASW is seriously concerned with the necessity for adequate social security legislation and welcomes such planning as will lead to constructive action on this matter. While there has not yet been an opportunity to study Dr. Marsh’s report in detail and while we might feel more far reaching measures are desirable, yet we believe this report is an important step and wish to go on record to this effect (CASW, Vol. 35, general membership minutes, Mar 26, 1943, pp. 2–3).

Touzel organized a committee at the Welfare Council to canvass the major agencies in Toronto to build a case for training social workers and renegotiating salaries for more highly trained professional personnel (SC 40, Box 80, File 15). Touzel anticipated the pragmatic steps that implementation of new policies would require and initiated necessary institutional arrangements. On March 19, 1942 at the Board of Directors meeting, it was approved that Touzel’s name would stand as the recommended representative of the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Montreal on the Ontario Regional Committee of the Unemployment Commission (SC 40, Box 89, File 1). Through her expanding network of colleagues, she maneuvered alliances, built coalitions, and sought to strengthen and support key organizations and initiatives.

The Cold War in Canada began in the 1940s and was particularly intense during the 1950s. There were severe restrictions on freedom of expression and the rights of assembly. A climate of fear drove radical activity underground and created an environment of suspicion, rumors, and red-baiting (Hewitt, 2002). During Cold War in Canada, antipoverty advocacy was dismissed as socialist/communist propaganda and income studies were contested by the business community (Finkel, 2007). Touzel’s social worker colleague and classmate, Mary Jenisson, was fired from her position at the Dale Community Centre in Hamilton in 1947 amidst community talk regarding her left-leaning communist affiliations (Jennissen & Lundy, 2011). In the United States, a similar pattern of the repression of radical ideas and radical social workers occurred, with the blacklisting and hounding of Bertha Capen Reynolds, Mary Van Kleeck, Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and Lillian Wald (Reisch & Andrews, 2002).

Touzel was known for her left-leaning views and radical ideas and was undoubtedly affected by the climate of suspicion surrounding left-leaning social workers. In 1947, the Board of Directors (which was composed of male businessmen) announced that they wanted the red book discontinued and declared that it was not the purview of the Welfare Council to produce such a study (SC 40, Box 89, File 1). Touzel disputed this decision but the Council acceded to the Board’s request to discontinue the production of the cost of living booklet and for the second time in her career, Touzel resigned in protest (Struthers, 1994; Wills, 1995). Once again, Touzel was stymied in her antipoverty efforts and she used the strongest statement of resistance she could muster as an individual that of resignation in protest.

Translating New Legislation into Practice

After her resignation from the Toronto Welfare Council, Touzel moved back to Ottawa (where her parents were living) and accepted a position as an assistant director at the national Canadian Welfare Council in Ottawa. She remained in this job for 6 years. In 1953, Touzel accepted the post of executive director of the Ontario Welfare Council (OWC) and moved back to Toronto to take up this new provincial position. In an account of the history of the OWC, the arrival of Touzel at the agency is described as “A New Era Begins” (OWC, F837, Box 1, A Brief History of the Ontario Welfare Council 1908–1959, p. 16). It was during the years 1950–1980 that the Keynesian welfare state was uppermost in Canada. The postwar promise of cradle-to-grave universal coverage was not fully met, but numerous reforms were enacted including universal-old-age security (1951), unemployment assistance (1956), national housing act (1954), and hospital insurance (1957) (Finkel, 2007; Guest, 1997).

Touzel accepted this senior provincial position at a time when the new legislation required the pragmatic skill of translating the new initiatives into practice. At the first Annual Meeting (1953) as the new executive director, Touzel addressed the membership about “opportunities and plans” and stressed the need for a Board of Directors and a membership that would accurately represent the province. She overviewed the existing services across the province, “out of which more intensive project work might be begun and through which the particular aspects of many questions might be flagged” (OWC, F837, Box 1, A brief history of the Ontario Welfare Council, p. 16). This document became The Province of Ontario-Its Welfare Services, a publication which was widely distributed and became a standard compendium of services for the province. It was updated regularly over the next 20 years. First published in 1954, this 94-page document began with an historical overview followed by a demographic description of Ontario. Touzel systematically listed and reviewed existing (1) tax-supported services at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels operating in the province; (2) the voluntary organizations active in the province; and (3) the operating research services (Touzel, 1954). Touzel launched a new Council periodical called The Ontario Welfare Reporter to disseminate information on new legislation, the activities of the Council, and news on welfare in the province.

In May 1953, Bessie presented a lecture on The Moral Foundations of Social Work at the 4th Western Regional Conference of Social Work, in Saskatoon, which was subsequently published as a small booklet. In this presentation, she asserted that human dignity and worth and the universal rights of an individual should drive social work:

no human being should be hungry, uneducated, unnecessarily ill, ill without care, idle or in want; his treatment when in need should be towards his re-establishment just as far as skill and resources make this possible (Touzel, 1953, p. 7).

She insisted that public assistance is not just necessary but is a right and warned of the demoralizing corrosive effects of a climate infused with a fear of welfare fraud: “to give grudgingly is little better than not to give at all” (Touzel, 1953, p. 11). For Touzel, universal human rights should be the platform for social organization and this vision which included the rights of women and the rights of the poor, the socially excluded and the marginalized, underwrote her social work career.

The 1950s in Canada was a conservative era in social work. Government services in the welfare state employed many trained professional social workers and expected their employees to be loyal to the conservative political status quo. For social workers such as Touzel who held radical left-leaning views, the venues for critique were constrained. During these Cold War years, socialist and Marxist approaches to social issues were vilified as unpatriotic (Jennissen & Lundy, 2011). Touzel continued to fight for better services whenever she had the opportunity. She organized annual province-wide conferences, which drew together agencies from across the province as well as ministry officials from the provincial and municipal levels to address key social issues. She then relayed the recommendations to the provincial Minister of Welfare, the CASW, and the Canadian Welfare Council and used these organizations as a platform to exert pressure for federal involvement in the problem. This broad policy initiative brought the major players together to achieve a common policy agenda and enhance standardized implementation (OWC, F837, Box 1, A brief history of the Ontario Welfare Council).

During her last year with the Council, Touzel expanded the jurisdictions she was overseeing and completed a study of the welfare services of York County. Touzel retired from the OWC to work on special assignments, June 1, 1964 (OWC, Box 35, biographical data). Subsequent to her retirement, she spent 2 years in Tanzania on a UN assignment as an advisor. When she returned to Canada, she began teaching as a special lecturer and consultant to the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. Honored with a Coronation Medal, a Confederation Medal, and an Order of Ontario as well as a City of Toronto Award of Merit and two Social Work Awards of outstanding contribution, Touzel continued working until her death in 1997 at age 93.

Discussion and Conclusion

Touzel was guided by her left-leaning vision of a welfare state founded on universal rights and universal benefits. For Touzel, social work was about social justice, closing the gap between the rich and poor, the recognition of the rights and needs of women, and understanding that interdependence between individuals and society is such that unsolved health problems, lack of housing, unemployment, poor education, and lack of adequate childcare affects everyone and creates community problems. Touzel’s personal and professional identities were so connected that although she retired in 1964, she continued to do social work until the end of her life.

Touzel recalled that she first began to study Marxism in Ottawa, during the Depression years and when she was chief of staff of the City of Ottawa Welfare Board (Reid, personal communication, May 6, 2013). The Communist Party was formed in Canada in 1921 and built in a secret aspect to its structure, which allowed anonymous membership for public figures whose membership could put them in jeopardy (Martin, 2007). Touzel became a secret member and remained active in the organization throughout her life. It was the Depression and direct exposure to poverty, unemployment, poor housing, health problems, and discrimination that radicalized her worldview. Touzel was not only a member of the communist party, but she also became part of a network of left-leaning female social workers who met in university social work programs and in shared workplaces and formed an informal network (Lewey, 2006). These women were active in supporting the creation of a welfare state, in improving labor conditions, reducing poverty, and establishing universal human rights.

In 1994, for her last public address at the 80th anniversary of the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, she stood with the help of her two canes and made a brief impassioned plea to the next generation:

The bread and butter programs are in grave danger and I am not asking you to consider them perfect. I am not asking you to give your support to the kind of thing altogether—that happened. But I am very afraid that the whole thing is going to scramble and fall. Don’t let them do it. Your turn is here and please defend the basic needs of human beings (Struthers, 1998, p. 24).

Consistent with her deep respect for the democratic principle of participation, she insisted that consulting those most affected by plans was of the utmost importance for both community organizing and policy planning as well as for individual and group clinical work. Touzel connected her arguments to the prevailing issues of the times. She advocated for women’s issues through debates on day care, child welfare, relief assistance, housing, and workplace accommodation, without specifically pointing out that this would benefit women. Perhaps these strategic accommodations assisted her to remain employed for 40 years. In her biennial address to the Canadian Association Social Work at the end of her term as national president (1952–1954), Touzel said:

We should not long neglect concern with social conditions and the society in which we live. The history of social work is full of illustrations of community needs—national conference material, Canadian Conference material, international Conference material. But beware of the danger when excited about techniques that we pay too little attention to the times in which we live. There is as someone has said the danger of taking the “social” out of “social work” (CASW, Vol. 2., Biennial Meeting Minutes 1954, p. 8).

Touzel had a vision of social work as a structural process whereby the “social” was as important as the individual and the task of the social worker was to hold both dimensions in immediate awareness. For the majority of her career, Touzel was in executive administrative positions, but this did not preclude her from social activism. When she was confronted with injustice that contravened her values, she would take a strong stand such as her public expose of the Public Welfare Department in 1936 and her resignation in protest from the Welfare Council of Toronto in 1947 when they stopped the publication of the cost-of-living booklet. Coalition building, persistent advocacy, and public education became trademark ingredients in her toolkit to promote social change.

Touzel participated in the formation of the welfare state in Canada, as a contributor on the Marsh Commission and as a mediator between the leaders in ideas (such as Marsh and Cassidy) and existing social agencies. She translated the ideas and new legislation into action. Her work was from the ground up and like many women was not always visible in the public eye or in the resulting historical record. Through studying agency archives, her contribution can clearly be seen in her ubiquitous presence on commissions, committees, conferences, coalitions, reports, and in keynote addresses. Remembering the life and career of Touzel and other social workers whose contributions are similarly buried in social work agency archives is instructive. Welfare retrenchment and neoliberal individualism have recreated many of the social conditions Touzel fought so hard to eradicate. The emergence of the welfare state was not a smooth process but faced significant opposition, set-backs, and attacks. As Touzel’s career illustrates, resistance requires a lifetime of committed action.